Educational Studies And Faith-Based Schooling: Moving From Prejudice To Evidence-Based Argument

Much of the political and public debate about faith-based schooling is conducted at the level of generalised assertion and counter-assertion, with little reference to educational scholarship or research. There is a tendency in these debates to draw upon historical images of faith schooling (idealised and critical); to use ideological advocacy (both for and against) and to deploy strong claims about the effects of faith-based schooling upon personal and intellectual autonomy and the wider consequences of such schooling for social harmony, race relations and the common good of society.
  This paper will attempt to review some of these controversies in the light of recent educational and research studies. Particular attention will be given to research investigations of Catholic schooling systems in various cultural and political contexts, studies which are largely unknown outside the Catholic community.
  In addition to reviewing educational studies of faith-based schooling, the paper will offer critical appraisal of the main arguments in the debate and it will also outline a possible research agenda for future inquiry in this sector of educational studies.     

Education and Human Diversity: The Ethics of Separate Schooling Revisited

This article reviews the arguments in the separate schools debate in an attempt to present a view of the matter which would be acceptable in a liberal democracy. Although the case for common or inclusive schools is treated sympathetically, the burden of the argument is that public sponsorship of separate schools can be defended once certain conditions are met.     

从"倾斜"到示范——重点中学的存废之争及其超越

重点中学的发展历程曲折颇多,其存在价值既受到质疑,又得到辩护.基于教育公平的价值理念,重点中学的弊端理应得到反思.但其作为一种已经客观存在的现象,争论其是否应该存在已无重大意义.改革重点中学的关键在于超越这种存废之争,从而让"重点中学"成为真正的优质示范学校.     

The new politics of Australian higher education: why universities get rumbled in the budget

This paper questions the dominant arguments that currently frame debate over the political ineffectiveness of the higher education lobby in Australia. Public choice theory is used to advance a more complex hypothesis that takes into account dramatic changes to the political environment over recent decades. This is tested against interview data from policy actors and vice‐chancellors.     

Content and Criticism: the aims of schooling

A number of recent writers have urged that schools not try to foster critical thinking in students, and this attack on what had lately emerged as very widely held to be a central aim of schooling is examined and found wanting. The debate is placed in the context of the evolving discussion in twentieth-century philosophy of education of critical thinking as an educational aim, and it is argued that the distinctions and arguments which are needed to rebut the attack on critical thinking can in large measure be found in the literature from Dewey on.     

Who Should Pay for Higher Education?

Policies that shift the costs of higher education from the taxpayer to the university student or graduate are increasingly popular, yet they have not been subjected to a thorough normative analysis. This paper provides a critical survey of the standard arguments that have been used in the public debate on higher education funding. These arguments are found to be wanting. In their place, the paper offers a more systematic approach for dealing with the normative issues raised by the funding of higher education. This approach is drawn from the political theory of John Rawls, whose view seeks to reconcile the values of equality, efficiency, and liberty. I show that, contrary to what we may think at first, an egalitarian approach like Rawls' does not in principle rule out policies that shift the funding burden from taxpayers to students or graduates. Which funding policy that approach selects as most fair will instead depend on the likely impact on the lifetime income prospects of the worst‐off group in society, and this is a question which will need to be settled by empirical evidence.     

Towards a meta-research agenda in science and enviormental educaion

Abstract

This paper begins by establishing the existence of a debate in the broader educational community about the nature, meaning and significance of educational research, and its recognition that different approaches to educational research do not simply represent different strategies for data collection but rest on and express different ideologies that implicate different political attitudes among teachers, students, subject‐matters,schools, support agencies and researchers themselves. Evidence can be seen that this debate is beginning to appear in the science education literature and it is believed that the arguments can be extended.

It is argued that research in science education and environmental education needs to consider methodology in the political terms of ideology, rather than simply in the technical terms of method and technique. Some of the recent thinking about the politics of method in both science education and environmental education, is then considered briefly and a number of meta‐research questions are proffered that might focus further attention on the political theory of research in these two fields.     

An ‘infusion’ approach to critical thinking: Moore on the critical thinking debate

This paper argues that general skills and the varieties of subject‐specific discourse are both important for teaching, learning and practising critical thinking. The former is important because it outlines the principles of good reasoning simpliciter (what constitutes sound reasoning patterns, invalid inferences, and so on). The latter is important because it outlines how the general principles are used and deployed in the service of ‘academic tribes’. Because critical thinking skills are—in part, at least—general skills, they can be applied to all disciplines and subject‐matter indiscriminately. General skills can help us assess reasoning independently of the vagaries of the linguistic discourse we express arguments in. The paper looks at the debate between the ‘specifists’—those who stress the importance of critical thinking understood as a subject‐specific discourse—and the ‘generalists’—those that stress the importance of critical thinking understood independently of disciplinary context. The paper suggests that the ‘debate’ between the specifists and the generalists amounts to a fallacy of the false alternative, and presents a combinatory‐‘infusion’ approach to critical thinking.     

Debate on global warming as a socio-scientific issue: science teaching towards political literacy

The focus of this response to the original article by Tom G. H. Bryce and Stephen P. Day (Cult Stud Sci Educ. doi:10.1007/s11422-012-9407-1, 2013) is the use of empirical data to illustrate and expand the understanding of key points of their argument. Initially, I seek to discuss possible answers to the three questions posed by the authors related to: (1) the concerns to be addressed and the scientific knowledge to be taken into account in the climate change debate, (2) the attention to be paid to perspectives taken by “alarmists” and “deniers,” and (3) the approaches to be used to conduct controversial global warming debate. In this discussion, I seek to contribute to the debate proposed by the original paper, illustrating various points commented on by the authors and expanding to other possibilities, which highlight the importance of political issues in the debate. Therefore, I argue that socio-political issues must be taken into account when I aim for a scientific literacy that can enhance students’ political education. Likewise, I extend the debate presented in the original article, emphasizing the attention that should be paid to these aspects and approaching science education from a critical perspective. Highlighting only the confirmation bias without considering political implications of the debate can induce a reductionist and empiricist view of science, detached from the political power that acts on scientific activity. In conclusion, I support the idea that for a critical science education, the discussion of political issues should be involved in any controversial debate, a view, which goes beyond the confirmation bias proposed by Bryce and Day for the global warming debate. These issues are indeed vital and science teachers should take them into account when preparing their lessons for the debate on climate change.     

The Passing of the Education Reform Act

When the Education Reform Bill, now an Act, was published higher education received little attention. It was a massive Bill, with major changes for the schools. But as time went on reaction outside Parliament, and lobbies within it caused higher education, but mainly the universities and their role, to be forced to the front of the political stage. Although key government concessions were made in the Commons, most of the action happened in the Lords. The government may have wanted to deflect the Lords from making substantial changes to their school reforms by giving their Lordships something to bite on in higher education. Or was it the success of the CVCP campaign, which undoubtedly raised morale in the universities, that was responsible for key changes? Was it luck, political circumstance, or the intellectual vigour of the arguments that led to government defeats on the question of academic freedom? This paper traces the passage of the Bill as it affected higher education.     

Curriculum debate and policy change

This article investigates the underlying themes and principles that inform curriculum debate and how they are articulated in current school policy discussions. This topic is approached with the help of a case study covering the debate on which subjects should be mandatory for students at the upper secondary school curriculum in Sweden. The focus is on the arguments for and against the inclusion of History among these core subjects. The aim is to order and structure this debate and to link the arguments found to basic underlying principles. Why was History considered important or unimportant? What arguments are found about the best way to teach History? This study employs a 4-fold distinction which distinguishes between perennialism, essentialism, progressivism, and reconstructivism as four schools of thought, each outlining its own particular view on what kind of knowledge is important and how such knowledge should be taught. One major finding is that two of the schools—progressivism and essentialism—completely dominate the debates under study. There existed a major fault line between those who emphasized the instrumental value of History as a tool for fostering good citizens, and those who considered History part of essential general knowledge about society.     

Paulo Freire and political correctness

This paper addresses the issue of political correctness from a Freirean point of view. An identification of the range of areas to which the label 'political correctness' has been applied reveals a confusingly multifaceted term. The author concentrates on the key characteristics of intolerance, conformity, the impeding of questioning and criticism, the stifling of debate, and the denial of alternatives. Thus defined, 'political correctness' has no place in Freirean education.     

Scholarship, Research and the Evidential Basis of Policy Development in Education

The starting point for this paper is the ongoing debate about the relation between research and policy in education. Recent developments in England and Scotland are reviewed in the context of political and academic arguments about the nature and function of research activity. The defensiveness of the research community in the face of professional and political attacks is examined critically. A case study of the Higher Still programme is used to illustrate the complexity of the relationships between evidence, ideology, values and professional practice. It is argued that the research community needs to become more politically sophisticated and to advance a clearer vision of its social function in advanced democratic societies if its potential contribution to educational development is to be realised. The dangers of a retreat to a narrow empirical role are highlighted.     

“劳动经济学”课程思政的目标、元素与方法

“劳动经济学”是专业核心课程,应积极进行课程思政体系建设。该课程的课程思政应努力寻求知识目标、能力目标和价值目标的和谐统一,使三者紧密融合。在实施课程思政的系统过程中,应在全局视野中提升认识,把握育人高度,体现知识教育与价值教育的内在契合并寻求各方配合的动力支撑。可灵活运用案例讨论法、课堂辩论赛、情景剧微视频、第二课堂拓展等教学方法提升教学效果。     

Minimal utopianism in the classroom

Abstract

In this paper, we build on recent work on the role of the ‘utopian pedagogue’ to explore how utopian thinking can be developed within contemporary higher education institutions. In defending a utopian orientation on the part of HE lecturers, we develop the notion of ‘minimal utopianism’; a notion which, we suggest, expresses the difficult position of critical educators concerned to offer their students the tools with which to imagine and explore alternatives to current social and political reality, while acknowledging the contingent ethical constraints of the system within which they and their students are working. While agreeing with utopian theorists such as Darren Webb who have defended the need for ‘blueprint utopias’ in education in the face of the reduction of the idea of utopia to a purely process-oriented pedagogy, our focus here is on the prior educational task of providing the conceptual and communicative tools for utopian thinking to emerge. The collaborative nature of this paper is reflected in the interdisciplinary sources on which we draw in developing our ideas, including moral philosophy, literary theory, political philosophy, anarchist theory and utopian studies.     

When to Teach for Belief: A Tempered Defense of the Epistemic Criterion

Michael Hand has defended the “epistemic criterion” for “directive and nondirective teaching” in his 2008 Educational Theory article, “What Should We Teach as Controversial? A Defense of the Epistemic Criterion,” as well as subsequent pieces. Here, John Tillson defends use of the epistemic criterion in the case of what he calls “momentous propositions,” but he rejects two of Hand's key arguments in support of the criterion. This rethinking comes in light of important contributions to the debate made by Bryan Warnick and D. Spencer Smith and by Maughn Rollins Gregory, also published in this journal. Tillson begins the article with an elucidation of the directive/nondirective distinction, and then discusses some limitations of defining the distinction in terms of intention. Next, he draws attention to the problems with the “soft‐directive teaching” method that Warnick and Smith advocate. Finally, Tillson provides an additional argument in favor of the epistemic criterion, an argument also grounded in work by Hand, which places emphasis on imparting knowledge alongside cultivating rationality among our educational aims.     

Globalisation and education: a review of conflicting perspectives and their effect on policy and professional practice in the UK

Many disparate groups have written about the effects of globalisation on education. Some have promoted its benefits; others have warned against its ill‐effects. This paper is an attempt at coalescing and juxtaposing the respective arguments as they relate to schooling policy and practice in the UK. The growing international pressures of globalisation affect practitioners in unpredictable and different ways, so the development of national policy is tied to the process of translating global trends to local contexts. The current political environment has enabled policy‐makers to drive education in large measure using economic imperatives and to devolve liability for ineffective schooling outcomes to a supplicant teaching profession. Whether or not these approaches are justified, there has been precious little debate around the core issues: what is the purpose of education, what is the role of schooling in safeguarding democracy and what obligation does the state have to the individual beyond encouraging economic well‐being? This paper seeks to illuminate the background to such a debate in a non‐judgmental way; to examine why the skirmishes between opposing factions have instead been had on the periphery – in areas like value‐added measurement and performance‐related pay – and why the teaching profession has so often been a spectator incapable of challenging or mediating the emerging hegemony.     

Picturing progressive texts: images of ‘democratic schooling’ in the work of John and Evelyn Dewey and contemporaries

Visual images played an increasing role in professional discourse and in popular and political debate about progressive education over a century or more. In the early 1900s photography was adopted by some progressive texts to convey new ideas illustrated by practice. This paper highlights an iconic example: John and Evelyn Dewey’s celebrated Schools of To-Morrow (1915), with reference to a small selection of its photographic illustrations. Consideration is given to how images were constructed, their status as historical evidence and issues of interpretation. Comparison is made with other illustrated works, preceding and following Schools of To-Morrow, by advocates of child- or student-centred pedagogies. The article urges critical reflection on visual representation in arguments for and against progressivism in more recent times. Insights drawn from earlier examples should be borne in mind by historians seeking to evaluate the role of pictorial sources in discourses of pedagogical reform.     

证成批判思维——兼回应批判思维只适用自由社会吗

批判思维可算是20世纪英美世界主流的教育目的,同时反映了西方知识论的理性传统,以及道德论上的尊重人的康德启蒙传统。大多数学者都从实用的角度,认为批判思维是因应现代社会快速变迁所需具备的基本能力。杜威、彼得斯都曾严谨地从哲学立场检视教育目的之探索意义。美国马克佩克从知识的条件证成教育蕴含批判思维,西格尔则从尊重人的原则、自足性作为成人生活预备、引领理性的传统、批判思维与民主生活等四个维度来证成批判思维作为教育理想。西格尔的论证是建立在理性、自由主义的氛围之上,这也引起了部分政治哲学家的反思,即民主社会是否可接受少数族群进行非批判思维的教育之提问。史特图与史贝克归纳了批判思维涉及民主社会的三个主题:政治体制与合法性、自由政体架构与善的概念、善的概念与其内在价值,一一加以检视,二氏认为支持性论证可以说明一、二主题,福祉论证较支持性论证更可涵盖,但仍未能完全证成将批判思维视为第三主题的内在价值。主流社会在推展批判思维之余,若少数族群没有违反重大社会共通价值且没有限制其子女参与主流社会,宜适度尊重其教育价值观。综合来说,批判思维对于非认同自由主义社群仍是可欲而非强制的教育价值。哲学论证,可以丰富教育概念的讨论,有助于体现批判思维的精神及理解其可能的限制,也具有教育实践的意义。     

Education for Environmental Action in the Community: new roles and relationships

This paper will begin with a critical overview of environmental education as it is currently taught and practised, drawing on empirical data as well as structural and theoretical arguments. Five principal shortcomings are suggested: environmental education is invariably based on a teaching and learning model which is top‐down and centre to periphery; environmental education does not lead to action competence; environmental education lacks authenticity; the track record of demonstrable success in changing the attitudes and values of children to the environment is questionable; the social, cultural and political context must facilitate participation and change. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of four models of the relationship between schools and the local community.